Ashfields
by Tsar Bomba
Summary: A mother and her child, each the other's world entire, try to survive in a barren wasteland that favors the cruel and the merciless. With her mind failing, she tries to guard that which is most precious to her. Pre-Fallout.
1. Chapter 1

When the woman wakes up to screams and smoke a small part of her hopes that they're real. They aren't, it's the drugs in her and they will be there until she dies but she lies still in the dark for a while waiting for the off chance that it will all finally be over. The child curls into her side. It's hard to tell what is real sometimes but she knows that he is real and he is alive. She reaches for him and the screaming stops. It's morning, well past sunrise but they can't see the sun anyway so it makes no difference. They should have been up hours ago but the passing of time grows more difficult to gauge with each passing day. How old is the child? How old is she? She was 22 when the bombs fell. At least she thinks she was. The child was not yet three when they left the vault. How many years had passed since then? 5. Maybe 6. She had no way of knowing, her PipBoy's screen had shattered a long time ago and she had left it in the vault. All she knew was that the nights and days had grown colder and there was no more food to find. There would be no surviving another winter out here. They had to move on.

She sits up, tattered robes and clothing scratching against her skin. She lights the fire. They're down to three matches but those aren't too hard to find out here. The smell of smoke triggers an old memory and she fights to stay in the here and now. What is her name? She doesn't remember. She likely won't ever remember. How did she get here? The insane ones had gone from peacefully delusional to violent. Out of their heads, screaming like animals. Breaking down doors and tearing people apart with their bare hands. An experiment gone terribly wrong. It was in the air, the water, a metallic taste and smell that twisted their chemistry and burned their nerves and made colors too bright and emotions too powerful. Made them see loved ones who were long dead and made them wish they were dead too.

Vault 106. She remembers little but she can remember those three numbers. That's enough for her to remember where she is now. What she is doing. What she needs to be doing. The smoke becomes just a smell and a sight and not a waking nightmare. The child wakes up, rubs his eyes, little hands balled up and blonde hair messy. He's got her hair. The weak fire only lights up so much and he looks around in a panic when she isn't still lying next to him. "Mom?"

"Here."

He sits next to her. She gives him the can of pork and beans she had set in the fire and he eats it with a stained silver spoon. They are running low on food and years of scavenging in the area around them has left little to eat and she knows that the boy doesn't like it when she hunts. Sometimes she has to lie and say that the blackened tasteless meat on spits over the flames is from a can she found and not a dog she shot but she is pretty sure he knows because he usually refuses to eat on those days.

The sun is high and white behind the ash and now it is too late to leave. They will spend the afternoon scavenging. Digging through trash and maybe going into the metro tunnels to see if any long dead refugees have left something behind. Maybe they'll get lucky.

They never went far from the vault in the years they had lived out here. The places they went only extended to about a five mile radius outside the entrance. They feared going much farther. This world was unknown and foreign and unrecognizable even to a native like her. She had hoped that eventually the insane dwellers still in the vault would kill each other or die off but whenever she opened the wooden door to the dirt tunnel and put her ear to the metal door she always heard mad laughter and moaning on the other side. Frantic running up and down the halls. Even if they did all die off she would have to find a way to shut off the filtration system and clean the air and she wasn't sure if it was something she could do or if it was worth it. The thought of going back inside made her fear her own mind and what might happen to it. But now it didn't matter. She was out of time and they had to find somewhere else.

She wanted to go to the capital. The city itself. Part of her hoped that maybe there were other people out there. Small settlements or maybe a commune they could find. Even now, with all this destruction and latent underlying violence in everything she believed there were people out there who would not turn a child away. She cared little for her own life now but the boy was her warrant and she would defend him until death. Either way, they needed to be inside, not a burned away wood frame or a damp metro. Not outside, exposed and vulnerable.

The building they had stayed in since leaving the vault used to be a bed and breakfast. It is still mostly intact save for the windows. She knows this because she used to stay there with her husband on the weekends and when he was away from home on business she stayed there with someone else. A memory overtakes her and her vision goes blue. A flash of brown curls and a green dress. Soft hands. A muttered I love you just days before the bombs blew her away.

"Mom?"

What was her name?

"Mom. Do we have to go today?"

The boy didn't want to leave. He was probably too young to remember the vault and this was all he knew. Nights spent at the bed and breakfast, playing catch at the empty baseball field north of here, poking at huge grey crabs with sticks at the edge of the Potomac. There used to be more of them, maybe six other people who had left the vault when they did. They all stayed together for a time but some had left and the others had died and they had been alone here for almost a year now. They would have had to leave before now but she was good at finding food and keeping it hidden. She had learned to hunt. To forage. She learned how to survive, but some circumstances can't be survived and she knows not to tempt them.

"Not today. But tomorrow morning we have to."

The boy nods.

"We have to find as much food as we can. Once we leave I don't know how long it will be until we find more."

He nods again. His face is filthy with ash and dirt. His old ragged baby blanket wrapped around his shoulders. It barely fits him now.

She kicks the fire out. She picks up a sling that she used to carry the boy when he was younger but now it carries food, some medical supplies, ammo, and a couple of the child's toys that they've scavenged. They head northwest, the cold sun and road their guide. Seneca Station has a grocery that might have some food tucked away, and though she had held off for some time now they would also check the metro station itself. After that they would try Jury Street's diner and the electronics store.

The walk to Seneca took about an hour. The road was empty and they were alone save for the occasional yelping of distant dogs. The buildings were still relatively intact but they had not stayed here for fear of someone else coming. The grocery store was dim and huge cockroaches scurried across the ground under their feet. The boy stood on a counter eyeing the bugs with equal interest and distrust while she rummaged the aisles. Nothing so far. A crate of rotting fruit in the store room. She found a single box of mac and cheese behind the toilet. She picked the boy up and walked outside.

The metro chain gate stood ominously before them and they studied it for some time before finally going down the steps. She slung her rifle over her shoulder and handed the boy a pistol. It wasn't loaded but she thought the sight of it might deter an attacker long enough for them to run. Or for her to kill them.

The smell inside is sour, the walls and the air and everything else damp and moldy. Restrooms to the right in front of the turnstiles. She finds a medical container on the wall next to the sinks, grabs the stimpaks and a bottle of what she thinks are painkillers. A bottle of water in one of the stalls. She is about to leave when she sees a flash of metal in one of the trash cans. It's a lighter, still about three quarters full of fluid. She pockets it and they move on.

The tunnels past the turnstiles are pitch black so she pulls the lighter back out and waves it in front of her. Caved in but there is a maintenance door before the rubble. Inside are some metal shelves with a couple of boxes of cram and sugar bombs. She opens the desk and finds some bullets. Another stimpak. All of this is put into her sling and they go further in. There is a closet at the back of the room and the floor beneath is sunken in and surrounded by glowing green fluid and strange mushrooms. They edge forward to look down and see the train tunnels beneath.

"I don't think we should go down there."

She shakes her head. "Me neither. Let's go."

They walk back outside. They have to cover their faces with scarves to block the driving ash but they are glad to see the sky. Jury Street Station is south of here but for the first time since being outside she stares east and wonders.

"What is it mom?"

"I want to see something."

"What?" He's nervous. He doesn't like going places that he doesn't know.

"Don't worry, this won't take long. Come on."

He follows behind her as they walk east, under a broken overpass and down the broken road. The ash clears and the barren land is visible for miles. There is no wind, no sign of life. Godless and silent and ugly. The trees are blackened and the earth scorched but she recognizes the landmarks of her old world. As they walk closer she grows nervous and slows down. They crest a hill and she stops with the boy next to her, staring down the road.

It's her neighborhood. Faded Pomp. No houses still stand, just bare wood frames. A couple of bent mailboxes. Her home is the first house on the left. One wall still stands and it is peeling and yellowed. It used to be blue. The window is shattered, edges red like someone broke it with their hands. Across the street and about three houses down is where _she_ used to live but all that is left is a bare lot. Blasted away like nothing ever stood there.

"Mom? Can we go?"

"Yes. I'm sorry. We shouldn't have come here."

"What is this place?"

"Nothing. It's nothing."

Past noon when they reached Jury Street and they had to turn around as soon as they made it there. Marauders and raiders were posted on the electronics store roof, clad in leather and trophies of human skin and bones and warpainted with blood and soot. She could not risk it.

They made it back to the bed and breakfast in the afternoon. The boy wrapped himself in his blankets and they shivered while she tried to get the fire going. She put the macaroni in a tin bowl and boiled it with one of the last bottles of water they had and they ate in silence. Leaving now would mean starvation. She had no faith in being able to find enough food on the road to stay alive. She looked south. The vault wasn't visible from here but the short chain fence and the yellow sign that read Fallout Shelter was just over the ridge.

"We have to go inside."

"Inside where?"

"106."

The boys face is white. He shakes his head rapidly and spills a little macaroni on his lap. She had unintentionally given him a powerful fear of the place. He had been around for the few times her mind had temporarily gone and he knew why she sometimes was struck dumb by sudden hallucinations and powerful visions that weren't really there. Somehow the air inside the vault had never affected him and it was the greatest blessing she ever had in life.

"We don't have a choice. We'll starve."

"I don't care."

"Don't say that."

He's quiet. He won't look at her.

"You won't come inside with me. You'll wait outside the door."

"What if they hurt you?"

"I'll sneak past. They'll be stupid and blind and they won't see me."

"Will the air make you stupid too?"

"Not if I'm fast."

"What about dad?"

"What about him?"

The boy stops talking.

"I'm just going to be inside long enough to get some food. That's all I'm doing."

He doesn't say anything.

"Okay?"

He shrugs, still won't look at her. "Okay."

Kick the fire out again. She loads her rifle and empties the sling and they walk out of the building and up the low rock face that separates them from the entrance. A pack of feral dogs yelps and lope away as they approach. She shoves the wooden door open and it crashes against the rock wall inside. The boy is standing a few feet back. This is the closest he has been to the vault since leaving it.

"Come on."

They walk inside, the sun outside is low enough now to cast some light through the wooden slats and the vault door stands closed at the end of the dirt tunnel. There are some brown skeletons and an empty rusted barrel overturned by the door and she flips the barrel over and sets it on its side.

"Here, hide in this."

"What?"

"Get in the barrel. I'll turn it so that if anyone walks by they won't see you. Careful not to cut yourself on the edges."

He backs inside at a crawl, down on his knees and elbows. She hands him the pistol.

"There are bullets in this. If anyone other than me looks inside the barrel I want you to shoot them. Pull this back until it clicks. Then pull the trigger. Make sure it's always pointing away from you."

"I'm scared." His face is shrouded in the dark and she bends down and kisses him on the forehead.

"Don't be. It'll be alright. I'll be back soon."

He nods, scoots farther back in the barrel. She stands and her hand hovers shaking over the vault controls like it had so many times before. She stops and presses her ear to the door. Nothing. No noise. She swallows nervously, swallows again, the dryness burning her throat. She pulls the rifle over her shoulder, grits her teeth and releases the door control.


	2. Chapter 2

The warning sirens blare. The door slides back and rolls away with a horrible screech of steel. She looks back, the boy is poking his head out of the barrel and watching her.

"It's okay. Be still and be quiet. Don't get out of the barrel for any reason."

He nods and disappears from view again. She turns and looks inside. Trash everywhere. The door control mechanism inside smashed and thrown into the corner so she can't close it from here. The walls brown with blood and beaten in in some places like they were trying to tear their way out from inside.

She tries not to breathe in too deeply or too much. Every time she inhales it is shallow and fast and she already feels herself going lightheaded. She pulls the scarf up over her mouth and hopes it will block the poison air even just a little.

The living quarters are past the main entrance and reactor chambers. The air will be the worst in there, and that is where she needs to go. So far she still hears nothing. She walks into the connecting room, the door to the science lab has been blocked and beaten in but she has no intention of going in there anyway. To the right are tunnels that extend in a semi-circle and lower into the living quarters. She slowly walks that way, careful not to step on the glass and rubble that fill the halls. The vault had deteriorated quickly.

Her vision went blue only a few meters inside. She blinked, shook her head violently, opened her eyes again. Still blue. The drug acts quickly and it will only get worse the farther in she goes and she knows she will have to move fast. She turns a corner, presses against a wall when she thinks she hears footsteps. The metal she leans on ripples and bends with the fluorescent light and she shoves herself off. Breathe. Maintain. This isn't real.

The footsteps round the corner. Her long dead mother walks up the stairs, disappears from view, ignores her entirely. Another one does the same. Five more times her mother walks past and she stands against the wall shaking. Shut your eyes. Run. Stop looking into her faces hoping she won't look back.

She falls around the corner, running until she reaches the security barracks. The door slides open and she staggers in. Six copies of her father in the middle of the room. They all watch her, watch as she stands and slowly walks closer. She goes around them, finds ammo and some medical supplies, focuses entirely on her task even when she hears the shuffling of feet. She turns, runs straight for the door and tries to not look when they all turn their heads to stare sadly at her. This hallucination was not new but it never terrified her any less and she gasps as the door shuts. She sits against the wall and sinks to the floor, holding her face in sweating palms. It's not real. Know this. Get up, walk down the hall. A man stands at the door to the residential quarters and she freezes. He is skeletal, bent at the waist, his hair torn from his head with his own hands, skin bitten and picked at out of violent anxiety. Vault suit torn and filthy. He screams, runs down the hall at her with a knife held white-knuckled in his hand. She can't tell if he is real but she takes no chances. She shoots and he falls like a marionette dropped by its master. She doesn't recognize who this creature used to be.

The door opens as she edges forward, careful not to track blood. The walls are black and burnt. Patterned with smudged handprints and scratches. Everything smells sour and her vision is still blue but she is used to it now. She sticks against the back wall and slides into a stairwell that leads to the cafeteria and food stores. Her husband is here somewhere, maybe dead but she won't dare to hope for so much. There's a wood shelf with boxes of food and clean water down one flight of stairs. A couple of old trade magazines. Mac and cheese and snack cakes. She catches a glimpse of red in a small plastic container. Dandy Boy apples. The boy's favorite. She puts it all in her sling.

She is still crouched by the shelves when she hears fast hard footsteps slam against the metal stairs up to her landing. A man rounds the corner and screams and swings a thick black nightstick over his head. He charges and she falls and right as the heavy metal end comes down upon her head he disappears.

They had been in the vault almost three years. The boy still an infant. Her husband had lost his sense of self. He had fought in Alaska before coming home. Dishonorable discharge. The shame of it and the things he had seen while killing in the snow made the drugs work stronger and more malevolently on him and he had become violent, withdrawn, prone to long periods of depression and paranoia and with every passing day it grew worse. One night he tells her that he had known all along what she had done.

"I'm glad she's dead."

She says nothing. He is splattered by red.

"For a while, I thought it was him. I had no idea it was his wife."

Still no emotion. No change in expression even as he approaches her. She is backed into a corner with the child in her arms and he holds a nightstick in front of him, dangling from lax fingers. It is bloody. A bit of matted hair stuck to the surface. She hears screams outside of her quarters. Smells smoke. The windows are broken.

He says something else. His voice is muted. Faint. She's looking at the ironing board against the wall she cowers against. The boy is crying.

"Shut him up."

His eyes are white. His hands are shaking. He keeps flicking his gaze between her and the boy and his stare is hateful and animal.

"Stop, please."

The boy cries louder. The smoke burns his throat. It is getting harder to see and breathe.

"Shut him up! Shut him up!"

"Stop!"

The boy screams and the man matches it, lunging at them. She grabs the iron from the board and it swings it hard into his head, crying out when he drops to the floor, tripping over him as she rushes out of the hazy room.

She curls into the corner of the stairs, tears blurring her vision and she shudders and shakes and whimpers. She tries to think through this rationally, unemotionally, but her last memory of him remained true. Teeth bared. Eyes wide and white. The veins in his neck huge. Terrifying and wanting her dead more than anything. He is here somewhere. The real him is here somewhere and if he sees her he will kill her. She will have to be fast or her mind will fail her and she will be defenseless to his rage.

A quick run through the living quarters. She fills her sling with as much as she can carry. Food, medicine, a mostly intact blanket, an undamaged cooking pot and a couple of eating utensils. She goes to a room at the back left corner, R3 painted yellow and peeling on the door indicating a residence. The iron is still on the floor where she dropped it. A dark stain where he fell. The bed she slept on bare to the frame, the sheets shredded. White goose feathers still floating around the dusty air. Everything rusted and filthy. The boy's toy box overturned. A stuffed animal. Maybe a dog. She almost considers taking it but she supposes that maybe the child is getting too old for such things and it is stained and missing a leg anyway.

She rushes back up the stairs as quietly as she can, sling rustling and clanging over her shoulder, back out the entrance tunnels to the vault door. She isn't sure how long she has been inside now but her vision is heavily distorted and she feels the light beginnings of a fearful anxious panic and she tries to think of nothing but the golden boy hiding in a barrel just outside.

She's almost out. The hall goes cold. She stops. A figure flashes into view, stands watching for only seconds before she disappears. Brown curls. Green dress. Warm eyes. The pain is overwhelming. Her ears ring. She hears herself screaming and bites her lips hard and tastes blood. The boy. Think of the boy. She staggers through, eyes shut tight, relying entirely on touch and memory until the hall and her coldness are left behind.

She can't do this. She can't do this anymore. Out. She wants out. More blood in her mouth. One more door. The metal circle hangs silent and wide open, the sunlight against the dark dirt cavern in view. She freezes.

He is standing in the tunnel. Staring at the wood door outside. Nightstick dangling at his side. Black against the light. He hasn't seen the boy. The tip of the pistol is pointing out of the barrel. The little hands holding it are shaking.

The man spins quickly, movements sharp and jerky. The boy gasps and drops the pistol and it clatters heavily against the barrel, the echo filling the silence and she makes a strangled noise in the back of her throat. He spots her before he sees the child. There is only a moment of vexation before he runs at her, mouth wide in a feral howl. He runs out of the shadows of the cavern. His face is sunken, the veins protruding, swelling bigger than himself. The right side of his misshapen from a blunt trauma. She can't move. The nightstick is held over his head. Only feet away. He swings down.

A gunshot cuts his screams off. He is blown back, the hole in his chest widening in color. He drops and does not move again. The boy is standing behind him, the pistol in his hands, a little blood on his face. She drops the rifle on the ground and falls to her knees and the boy slowly moves to her.

"Are you okay?"

He nods, mouth open, trembling.

"Give me the gun."

He drops it in her hand. She throws it on the ground and grabs the boy and holds him tight to her chest.

"I'm sorry. I tried to shoot. I tried."

"I know. It's okay."

He pulls back from her, sniffing. He looks at the man. His eyes are wide open, the sclera deep red. His teeth brown and worn down jagged and short from constant jaw-grinding anxiety. Face marked and smeared with blood and soot and other filth. Black hair matted faded and pulled away.

"Who was he?"

"No one. He was no one."

"We have the same eyes."

She doesn't say anything, just stands. Picks the pistol off the floor. Looks at the man on the ground with the emerald irises and the scarlet puddle that spreads around him. The boy does have his eyes.

"Let's go."

"Okay."

The colors she sees outside are vivid but the hallucinations stop and she has never been so grateful for the lonely white sun in her life. It is low on the horizon, the sky to the east dark purple and bruised. The walk home is slow, her legs are still weak and the boy takes the lead. When they reach the bed and breakfast she gets the fire going again and lets the boy pick what they have for dinner. Salisbury steak and noodles. His obvious choice. She gives him the dried apples and he eats them in silence while the water boils.

They eat on scraped up plates, her always making sure to give him just a little more. It's the largest meal they have had in a while and afterwards they lie in their nest of ragged blankets and watch the sky darken through the holes in the roof. No stars out tonight, too many ash clouds. They are quiet for a while before the boy rolls over and looks at her.

"That was dad, wasn't it."

"Who was?"

"The man that you shot."

"Yes."

He doesn't say anything for a little. She is tense and still.

"Why did he try to kill us?"

"The drugs in the air made him crazy. He didn't know what he was doing. He didn't even recognize us."

"Are you sad that he's dead?"

"No. Are you?"

"No. Maybe a little."

Somewhere an iguana scurries over the rubble in the house and sprints outside through a crack in the wall. The boy watches her in the dark. She can't meet his eyes. "Did you love him?"

She shakes her head. "No."

"Did you ever love anyone?"

"I love you."

"But anyone else?"

"Yes. Why are you asking all these questions?"

"Who was it?"

"Someone who lived near the house your father and I lived in."

"Where are they?"

"She's dead."

"How did she die?"

"She didn't go into the vault when the bombs fell. She stayed outside."

"Why?"

"She thought it was a false alarm."

"False alarm?"

"She didn't really think the bombs were falling. She didn't know."

"But you and dad did?"

"He didn't want to take any chances. He was right after all."

"Do you think maybe she is alive out here somewhere?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"It's easier to accept than to hope."

The boy is quiet again. It's too dark to see his face and she can't tell what he is doing in the murk. "What is it?"

"I hope she's alive. Maybe we'll find her."

Her throat is tight, her chest tighter. She bites her tongue and clenches her jaw to stop the thin line of tears welling at her eyes. She swallows and tastes blood. "Maybe."

"You said dad tried to kill us because of the drugs in the air."

"Yes."

"Why haven't you tried to kill me though?"

"He was breathing the air longer. And I've been out of there for a while."

"But you still feel it sometimes. The air."

"Yes."

"So you might try to kill me one of those times."

She reaches for him in the dark. Her hands hold his face and she pulls him closer. "I promise you I will never kill you. I'd kill myself before I'd ever even hurt you."

"I know. But you said he couldn't help it. What if you can't help it?"

She's quiet. He's right and she had never thought of the possibility of it happening until now. Could she do it? Put the trigger in her mouth and pull? Leave the boy alone? If it meant that he was unharmed then yes she would without hesitation. But would she have the metal faculty to do so?

This is something she'll have to address at some point. But not right now. Not here. "Don't worry about it. That won't happen."

"Promise?"

"Promise."


	3. Chapter 3

The next morning they'll walk east into the grey sunrise until they reach the Potomac. She won't risk the road itself yet and she knows that following the river will get her to the city. She's filled the sling to the top with their supplies and tied off the ends so that nothing would fall out. The boy carries a small backpack with food, water, and medicine in case they are separated. The pistol is stuck in his old leather belt, empty. She will give him bullets if she thinks it necessary. He wears a mismatched wardrobe of winter clothes and small leather boots she found by chance and she wears a dusty black pea coat she took from the empty estate of someone wealthy and long dead. Scarves that are ragged and ripped and barely block the ash. The boy's knit gloves have holes in the fingers.

They try to make the bed and breakfast look like no one has lived there so that if anyone comes by they won't try to track them but the boy insists they leave just a little bit of food and water just in case someone good finds their abandoned homestead. She hides a bottle of water and a single tin of cram behind the fireplace and tells him that's all they can afford to leave behind.

He is crying as they walk away, watching over his shoulder. The hollow burned out carcass of the bed and breakfast is all he has known for years and he is afraid of what lies to the east. She wants to comfort him but does not know what words to say so she says nothing. They pass a stretch of land littered with biohazard barrels and the ground itself spits whatever has leaked outside in hot streams and bubbles and they are careful to move around it. They reach the road, the river is farther east. She can see the Washington Monument shrouded in a haze of ash. The skeletons of buildings and skyscrapers bent at the spine.

Down the road to the south is a wooden home with only the frames and the back wall standing. A sunken porch. There is a collapsed grain silo behind it. Wooden fences lined with barbed wire. Someone's farm.

"Did you already go to that house?"

She shakes her head. "No. Let's check it out."

"It doesn't look like there's anything there."

"Come on."

They walk down the broken road, the ruined wastes on either side. Black trees and white dirt. She feels exposed and her fingers twitch. She wants to hold the rifle just in case but it would scare the boy so she holds off. The house is empty like he said. They walk through scorched grass. Burned wheat stocks. She has him stand next to the silo while she walks to the base that was ripped from the concrete foundation. The smell is sour. The sun lights up inside and she sees rotted bodies crowded into the back, browned and skeletal faces grinning. Stripped of their clothes. She hears the boy walking around and goes back outside before he can see what she sees.

"Nothing in there. Let's go."

The boy doesn't say anything and she noticed that a wall of the silo was ripped away and that he would have seen inside anyway.

"I'm sorry."

He stays silent as they walk back up the road. There's a Red Rocket fuel station and a little farther north a square collection of mostly intact homes.

They lived here for a short time, when the boy was a lot younger and there were more of them. They stayed until the raider and slaver attacks became too much and by then it was only the two of them left. The boy didn't remember it and when he asked about those homes she told him that there was nothing there. They follow the road where it bends east and then leave it to go down a slope to the coast of the Potomac. The river is murky green and they can't anything below the surface in even the most shallow waters. There is a rotted dock half sunken into the water and a capsized cargo boat lodged in the earth where the waters dried and pulled the earth away. The boy stands on the coast while she wades through and goes through a few metal boxes and crates around the boat but they are all empty and they move on. An overpass a little further south has collapsed into the river. Cars are piled in the water where the concrete broke and the highway itself sticks out of the water at an almost 70 degree angle and pierced the sky like a monument to an era long dead. The boy tries a couple times to climb it while she looks through the cars and he always slides back down to earth.

Not far past the collapse they reach more concrete rubble and rebar where a building fell and an impassible stretch of river. She can't see through the cloudy surface and won't risk swimming through so they scramble up the rock and end up high on the western bank to look over the water. It is dark glass under the barren sky and it no longer flows. They look past the bend and see intact buildings further south. A dark structure on the hill overlooking them not far from where they stand. Next to it there's a swing set with no swings, just rusted chain. Half a slide with the steps leading up to it corroded and yellow brown. Bent monkey bars.

"Mom. What is this place?"

"It's a school."

"School?"

"It's where children went to learn to read and write."

"There are other children here?"

"No, not anymore."

"Are there anywhere?"

"I don't know. Not many."

The north wall to the school has collapsed, the roof blown away. They walk into a classroom. Wooden desks still in neat rows in front of a chalkboard. Torn posters of the alphabet on a stained wall. The boy picks up a piece of chalk and scratches on the board. The floor below there's is hollow and metal lockers line the hallway. She goes through each one and doesn't find anything except a baseball hidden in the dark corner of one on the end. The boy has drawn a bird on the board. She can't remember the last time she saw a bird.

"Here." She shows the boy the baseball. His was lost in the river not long ago and she hadn't been able to find another until now.

"Where did you find it?"

"A locker below here."

"That's stealing."

"Stealing? If this is stealing then we've stolen a lot more before."

"This is different."

She looks at the ball. The sides are rough and scuffed. There's a mark where a thumb compulsively rubbed it. It was treasured by the little hand who held it. "You're right. I'm sorry."

She puts the ball back where she found it. They go back outside and the boy eats lunch in the playground while she goes through the dumpsters by the back wall of the school. Everything damp and spoiled. She finds one of the swings not far back from the dumpsters and she connects it to the chains and the boy swings a little on the rusted frame before it creaks and threatens to collapse. "Mom. Can we go?"

"Yes, let's go."

They walk further south, the river still visible over the ridge. Past the sign for the school of the ruins of Springvale itself. Most of the homes are burned away but a few are intact and the windows and doors are boarded up. She thinks she sees a curtain flutter in one and she watches them warily but no one hassles them and they scavenge a few things in the hollowed homes. The boy scrambles up on a boulder on the edge of town and cups his eyes with his hands.

"Mom, come over here."

She climbs up. Between the low rocks is a slope that climbs down to a shallow pit. A nuclear warhead stands in the middle, tilted at an angle and mired in thick glowing mud. A small campsite against a rocky ledge near it. A man in rags sits cross legged only feet away from the bomb.

"What is he?"

"I don't know."

"Can we go talk to him?"

She forgets that it's been over a year since they've had human contact other than themselves. "I don't think we should. He might be dangerous."

"He's just an old man."

From here his skin looks worn and wrinkled. The top of his head bald. He evokes a monk deep in contemplation. Something ancient that should not exist in this timeline. He sees them watching, slowly raises his face. He lifts a bony arm to them.

"I think he wants us to come over."

"Hold on."

She steps off the boulder and walks slowly over, her steps cautious. The boy stands a bit behind her. As she gets closer she sees the man's skin is peeling off his frame like old leather and she stills. "What are you?"

"Just an old man worshipping our last god. Please, join me?"

His voice is rough like gravel over sandpaper, the eyes blue and white and cloudy. She can smell him from here.

"What's wrong with your skin?" The boy holds on to her coat and he hides behind his mother's back. The creature smiles and the teeth inside are yellowed and cracked. "I am being born again. This bomb, this god... It's saving me."

His nose is an empty cavern, the ears fallen away to small nubs. His rags swing as he stands and she backs away. "This bomb is our salvation. It is our guide to something better than this blasted world of flesh and life. I have seen what it has done to others, and what it will do to me. I will live forever and you will be bones in the dust."

"Get away from us. Sit back down."

The creature stops, arms outstretched like the Virgin Mary. Palms open. "I mean no harm, child. No harm."

The boy tugs on her sleeve. "Can we help him? Can we give him some food?"

"I've moved beyond it, boy." His milky eyes turn to the child and she instinctively shields him. "I am beyond the material needs of this world."

"Go. Let's go."

They back away. The creature sits back down, his robes have shifted and they can see the browned leather skin stretched over his bones. He watches them leave and calls to them.

"You'll have to choose. Death or dying. There is no living out here."

They hurry back north, following the road through the rocky paths until they see the river again and it isn't until then that either of them speak again.

"What was that man?"

"I don't know. I don't know what he was."

"What was the thing next to him?"

"A bomb."

"One of the things that made the world like this?"

"Yes."

"Oh."

The boy doesn't ask anymore questions but she knows what he is thinking. "We won't end up like him."

"How come? This is our world just like it's his."

"Yes, but we are trying to do something better. We are trying to be better."

"Because we're good guys."

"Yes. Because we're good guys."

"He said we can't live out here."

"We're living out here right now, aren't we?"

"Yeah. Okay."

"Okay."

They reach a billboard with a sign depicting a man in a red space suit with a monkey in another smaller space suit on his shoulder. The boy asks what Captain Cosmos is and when she says it was a television program he asks what a television is.

A burned away home with the paint peeling up the walls is near the road and they walk up to look inside. There is a skeleton in the bathtub and nothing else. She looks around. She's missing something. Nothing under the tub, the house itself already picked through. She looks at the skeleton again. There is a hole in the side of the skull. One arm dangles over the edge of the tub. She follows the fingers and sees a gap in the rubble that drops about a foot to the foundation. She reaches down inside and feels cold metal.

It's a scoped .44 magnum. Five bullets inside. She dusts it off and aims down the sight and sticks it in her belt.

There is a supermart is farther down the hill. It would have been one of the first places people checked after the bombs fell and she knows it's empty but it's starting to get dark and she wants them to be inside out of the cold. The parking lot is filled with cars with shattered bloody windows and open hoods where others have torn out the motors and taken the gasoline.

They walk inside, careful not to make too much noise with the doors. The lights inside are dim and the stained linoleum floor littered with trash. The aisles themselves empty. There's nothing in here.

To the left is the sparking flicker of neon script. A Nuka Cola machine stands next to the door. She goes behind it and runs her hands over the back.

"Mom. What're you doing?"

"Hold on."

She finds a release lever. It clicks and a panel on the back falls open. She reaches inside and grasps the long glass neck and gives it to the boy.

"Here."

"What is it?"

She twists the cap off and drops it on the floor. "Try it."

He sips cautiously on the bottle. She can hear it fizzing and he gulps it greedily after the first taste. "It's good."

"It's yours."

"Do you want some?"

She takes a tiny sip and gives it back to the boy. He cradles the bottle in his hands and follows her around the store. Shopping carts are everywhere and the noises they make whenever she accidentally steps into one are loud and cause the both of them to flinch. She walks the entire store and finds nothing except for a locked storeroom at the back with no key. A maintenance terminal to access it is shut down.

"Look around for a key."

"What kind of key?"

"Any kind of key. I think it should be back here somewhere."

The boy goes down the hall and into what looks like an employee breakroom while she looks behind the counter and inside metal boxes around the door. The boy calls to her and brings back a single key hanging on a ring. She smiles at him and puts her hand in his hair and the lock clicks open without resistance.

There's shelves of food in here. A medical container on the back wall. Crates of bottled water. Alcohol. An inactive security Protectron still in stasis. They eat a good meal. Canned fruits and noodles and tinned meat. She has a small glass of scotch and the first taste alone is enough to dull her throat. She finds blankets and a new coat for the boy. She gets an idea and lines both of the supermarket doors with the shopping carts so that if anyone walks in they'll hear it and they fall asleep warm and full and as complete as they have felt in some time.


	4. Chapter 4

A metallic clatter wakes her from vivid blue nightmares and she sits up in the dark, the boy curled up next to her. She gently shakes the child and puts a careful hand over his mouth when he opens his eyes.

"Someone else just walked inside." She can't see his face but he looks around wildly. "It's okay, we're leaving. Get your things and be very quiet."

He nods and she stands and puts her ear to the door. Distant muffled voices. She carefully swings it open just wide enough for them to pass through and motions for the boy to follow. They exit at a crouch, shielded by shadow and the counter in front of the door. The way out is a straight run in front of them but there are maybe five men in ragged coats standing in their way. They watch the mart and talk and one of them is moving the carts away from the door. They don't seem to notice the woman or child.

"Mom. What if they're good guys."

They aren't dressed like road marauders but she can see the outlines of shotguns and rifles over their shoulders in the light of the fluorescence. "What if they aren't. We can't risk it."

She looks down the wall leading to the door. There's a hallway down the right. The men look around, drop their totes on the floor by the door. They walk along the front of the building past the cash registers and disappear from view.

"When I say go, I want you to follow me into that hallway there." She points and the boy nods.

"Go."

She vaults over the counter and turns and pulls him over and they crouch into the shadows against the wall, moving as quietly and quickly as they can over the linoleum and following the curve of the room down the hall and into a dark room. She closes the door and pulls out her lighter and waves it in front of them. The small flame illuminates the back wall and dances over red stains.

"Oh my God."

They're in a bathroom. The urinals have been torn from the walls and the stalls are filled with clothing and shoes and personal artifacts. A table against the wall is strewn with bones, muscle tissue, familiar organs. The iron smell of blood and decay is overwhelming.

"Oh my God."

There's another table with knives, forks, plates, all stained dark. A large clear refrigerator layered with red meat. She hears footsteps outside the door.

"Run."

They burst through the door and she crashes into the man on the other side. She scrambles to get up and the man shouts and grabs at her blindly but the boy takes her hand and pulls her through the hall and they sprint outside. It's still dark out. They run through the parking lot. There's an old bus rusting on the edge and she pries the doors open and they hide inside. She tells him to stay down. She can hear light footsteps as the men hunt them. She shields the boy with her body and they stay motionless on the floor, shaking and praying silently to any deity that remains behind.

The bus door is pried open. She pulls the boy up and wedges them between the seats. A man runs up the steps and into the aisle, head swinging side to side and an ax clutched in his hands. His movements jerky like an animal's. She presses them down further and tries to reach her rifle but her arms are encircled around the boy and trapped between him and the seat in front. He is shaking violently and shivering and she begs and begs to no one in particular. The dark figure walks down the aisle, past them shadowed in the night. He turns, walks back down and outside and yells for his men and they go running into the darkness.

An hour passes. Another. The child is asleep and she nervously watches the mart out of shattered windows and when the sun rises an eternity later she wakes him and they creep out between cars and run south along the back road.

The morning is cold and the ash swirls in small twisters over the pavement and under their feet. They walk in silence for some time along the outskirts of the city. They're moving away from the river now but the banks would have left them exposed anyway and they both feel better with the wastes to one side. The boy had barely said a word and she stops them both and kneels down and pulls the boy into her, holding him against her chest. He's stiff and won't hold her back.

"Do those men eat other people?" He says this muffled into her collar and she pulls him a little closer.

"Yes."

"Would they have eaten us?"

"Yes. They would have."

"Will we ever eat people? Even when we run out of food?"

"No, we won't."

He relaxes. Just a little. She was sure that at some primal level the boy had already been aware of cannibalism. They'd seen the signs before while scavenging around the bed and breakfast: a pile of torn bloody clothes, small scraps of strange blackened flesh around an old fire, human bones with human teeth marks. But this had been their first time to talk about it directly.

She pulls away and hands him a breakfast of the apples he likes, one of the only things she had taken from the store before fleeing. He takes them in silence.

"I promise you we won't."

"Okay." It's all he says. She stands and studies their surroundings while he eats. The wasteland is to the west. A mostly intact structure to the easy amidst the hollow skeletons of the city surrounded by collapsed chain link. Any sign indicating the nature and purpose of the building is long gone. They both watch it for a little while.

"We should go inside and check it out."

"That's what you said about the super mart."

"We don't have a choice. We're low on food."

The exterior had been stripped of everything. Acidic rain had worn away the block letters painted and faded on the wall they faced. Inside was dim and she used the lighter to illuminate the room. The smell within was old and rotten but harmless. No indication of habitation. She could hear the scurrying of roaches but no one was inside. The boy walked cautiously behind her.

"Mom. What is this place?"

Conveyer belts lined one side of the factory. Past the lobby and to the right was a small office with a radio turned to static and a desk. She checked the file cabinets while the boy walked around the factory. There were stuffed bears everywhere.

"Why are there all these teddy bears here?"

"This is where they made them, I think."

"This one is holding a gun. And this one has a syringe in its arm."

"Someone thought they were being funny."

She walked over to him. The gun was a thin Chinese pistol that had broken ages ago. She took the stimpak from one bear and a half empty bottle of whiskey from another. She wondered if the boy would take a bear for himself but he didn't and they stayed smiling on their belts.

She sees a manhole in the back of the factory floor. When she puts her fingers in the holes to lift it it rises easily. She looks down and sees only darkness where the ladder fades away.

"Mom, I don't want to go down there."

The tunnel below reeks of refuse and she figures that under the factory is a sewer waystation. Structures like this usually have an office or possibly an abandoned refugee hideaway, which means supplies or even food.

"You don't have to go down there. Just stay here."

"I don't want you going down there either. There's probably nothing there."

"We need food. We're almost out. I have no idea when we'll find more. The city isn't like the wasteland, most of the stuff here is already taken. Do you understand. We don't have a choice."

"I don't care."

"We'll starve."

"I don't care."

"Stop saying that."

The boy is clutching his arms to his chest, nervously twisting his tiny fingers. He's about to cry and he's looking at the ground.

"Fine. Let's go."

"Mom."

"Come on."

She walks outside, the boy follows. He doesn't say a word as they get back on the road.

"You can't be so afraid of everything."

He says nothing.

"I won't be around forever. You'll have to fend for yourself eventually and you'll starve if you aren't willing to take risks."

She thinks about how horrible the words she says are. Risk what? Is starving not better than the alternative? How many times had she weighed the outcomes in her head and concluded that she would rather kill the boy herself than allow him to be taken by something worse?

Still, he says nothing.

"Do you hear me?"

"Yes. I was scared."

"Scared of what?"

"You going down that hole and not coming back."

"Sometimes that happens. You can't do anything about it."

"Aren't you afraid?"

"Yes. I'm terrified."

"Then why do you act brave?"

"I have to. You will too. I know you can do it."

"Do what?"

"Be brave."

"Do you think the old man was right?"

"What old man?"

"The one by the bomb. He said our choices are being dead or dying. We can't live out here."

"Living is being brave and that's what we try to do."

"Try?"

"That's all we can do."

He goes quiet and she thinks about what she said and wonders if it made sense to him or if it was just the ramblings of her own failing mind. She supposes it doesn't matter now.

"You were probably right."

He looks at her for the first time since they left the factory. "About what?"

"About nothing being down there."

"Maybe. But maybe not."

That's all they say for the next hour. They walk further south as the road curves into the city. The corridor narrows and the broken land on either side rises above concrete walls. Crumbling and smoky skyscrapers pierce the ash veil around them and she feels exposed and trapped and when they reach an intersecting street that passes over theirs they leave the road and walk up. It goes east and west and when they see that the road going into the city is blocked they instead turn west towards Fairfax and the wasteland beyond.

They walk down a hill to a small auto dealership on the outskirts between Fairfax and the capital. The cars were long stripped of any usefulness but the area was desolate and empty and the sun had begun its descent.

The dealership still has two corvegas on the showroom floor but the nuclear reactors were removed and anything inside had already been ransacked. She finds a barrel filled about halfway with trash and with a small amount of oil she lights it and sets the fire in the middle of the room. It warms quickly and she sets a can of pork and beans on the rim to warm. At the back of the floor by the offices and the maintenance garage are two filthy couches. The boy sits on one and watches his mother go through the desks. The contents are mostly old papers and files but underneath them all she finds an intact deck of cards and she teaches the boy goldfish while they eat dinner. The room gets hot and the boy pulls off his coats and when he moves his thin ribs shift under white skin and she is heartbroken. The fire dies away and they fall asleep on the couches, exhausted and limp as abandoned bony marionettes.


	5. Chapter 5

Rain against the windows wakes up the boy. She's been up for some time now. It falls light and grey and she opens the door to the dealership to watch it patter on the ground for a few minutes but it's cold out and the sun is hidden by clouds so she closes it again. She dumps the trash out of the barrel and lights it with a match and the boy walks over to her, blonde hair sticking up off his head. They split the last pouch of mash, she gives him just a little more, and they dress in their coats and scarves and boots. The boy pulls his hood over his head and she makes a makeshift hood of her own out of her scarf to block the rain. At least some of the ash has been washed away.

She sees a clock next to the door as they walk out. Time stilled at 9:47. The sirens had started at 7. She had begged her to come with her. They had all sought shelter so many times before that she was not surprised when she refused.

"It's another false alarm. Another fake. I'm tired of fakes."

Her words held a promise that even she didn't seem to believe.

"What if it isn't."

She had shrugged. Given her that little all-knowing smirk that she had fallen for. Her husband never smiled.

"It is. I'll be here when you get back."

It wasn't. The world had blasted away not two hours after, with her in it. She briefly imagines her standing on her porch, watching the distant red glow grow, passive as the wave of fire and death rolled towards her, unmoving as she became ash. She was always so accepting of the inevitability of everything.

The boy is shaking her arm, his fingers clutching her sleeve.

"Mom. Come back."

Three words he always says when she gets lost in recollections and visions that paralyze her with guilt and fear and a self-loathing so powerful she wishes herself destroyed. She could have saved her.

"I'm sorry. Let's go."

They look west once outside, the Fairfax ruins not far. There is a grocery there that may have something hidden away in a dark damp corner. She used to come here with her on weekends when their husbands were gone. They went to a small hotel she can't remember the name of and drank wine in the lobby and went upstairs to dim warm rooms and always drove home in separate cars at midnight. She always wore that green dress, the one she liked so much.

The road curved downward and they were careful not to slip on the slick, oily pavement. Not much visibility in the rain but she could see the dark shapes of buildings ahead. Fairfax was mostly a crater, split like an open wound in the earth itself and only the center structures and part of the main street remained. The grocery blasted apart, the plot of land where their hotel stood empty. They moved on without her lingering anymore on dead memories and dead thoughts.

The place itself looked abandoned. The haze that hung heavy over Fairfax would have been enough to deter most but the rain had washed the ash away and with it any footsteps that might have indicated otherwise. The air itself was silent and the raindrops muffled. They splashed through murky puddles blackened by filth and they were walking up the stairs to a municipal building for cover from the rain when a sound exploded through space itself and the concrete at their feet shattered and the silence broke into a chaos of shouting and gunfire. She grabs the boy by his arm and pulls him behind a wide marble pillar, ducking around it and crouching to the ground.

Men and women in furs and rags sprint by, warpaint smeared by the rain and mouths wide in feral screams. Armed with everything from rifles to baseball bats to chains and lead pipes. Molotov cocktails. Grenades. Swords. All of them screaming, chanting wildly. This was echoed by similar noises further down the road and she realized that they had walked into a war for territory between two opposing clans.

A homemade bomb explodes about twenty feet down where they stand, filling the air with smoke. She takes the boy's hand and they run across the street to a parking lot and turn up the stairs into a hollowed building, the roof blasted away. One of the raiders is shooting from a window in the room they enter and she shoots him in the back. He falls out of the window and she grabs his dropped rifle. There's a blood-stained cot in the corner of the room with a couple of ammo crates resting on the blackened mattress. The takes the bullets and has the boy hide underneath while she crouches in the corner. A man runs up the stairs, sees her pressed into the wall, shouts as he lunges at her with a knife. She shoots, her rifle clicks and nothing fires. The blade is coming down upon her.

A small explosion, he is blasted back and crumples at the foot of the stairs. The boy is holding the pistol, shaking. Gasping. She pulls him out from under the cot and they run outside down a ruined back alley that runs parallel to the fighting. A fire is spreading behind them. Over the buildings she hears gunfire and screaming and she smells smoke and dust. They run down a stone staircase and turn back onto the road. The people that tear each other apart behind them don't notice as they fade into the rain.

They run down the highway, going over an overpass and looping back around to hide underneath it, seeking protection from the rain and from those they fled from. She pulls the boy to her, collapsed against the damp concrete wall. He won't stop crying.

"Shh. It's okay. It's okay."

"Mom."

"It's okay. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"I killed him. I killed him."

"It's okay."

"I killed him."

She wipes tears from his soot-streaked face. He shudders, sputters. The pistol still hangs from his fingers.

"Listen. He would have killed me. He would have killed me if you hadn't killed him."

He won't meet her eyes. She takes his chin and makes him look her in the face. "Do you understand. He was a bad person."

"I'm a bad person too."

"No you aren't. You aren't bad for killing him."

He sniffs. Downcast eyes, golden hair wet against his face. A saint come to earth.

She pulls him close again. "Do you want to know why you aren't a bad guy?"

"Why."

"Bad guys don't feel bad when they kill. They don't feel sad. They don't care. You do. You care so much."

He finally looks up at her. The last beautiful thing in this world.

"As long as you care, you're a good guy."

"Okay."

"You don't believe me do you."

"I don't know."

"That's okay. Let's rest a while."

She's a bad guy, she realizes. By her definition. How many had she killed. She had put a bullet in her husband without the smallest amount of remorse, without pity. And how many times had she wondered if the death of both her and her child was not more merciful than this life. Not that she believes she could bring herself to do it. She wishes she could but she knows she can't. She won't ask the boy why his gun had bullets in it when she never gave him any. It worked out after all.

They sit down on block of concrete under the overpass, out of the water. Eat cold beans out of the can. The distant gunfire gradually dies away. From here they can hear the hum of distant fire. The rain stops, leaving a freezing haze that bites sharp when the wind gusts. When they leave she looks east and sees the glow of burning Fairfax.

She realizes that she was wrong. How hard she had convinced herself that somewhere in the city they would find salvation, safety. A life for the boy. Other children to play with. A home. A sanctuary for others like them. He still believes such a place exists. He has to believe, because when he stops like she has then there will be nothing worth fighting for. They had encountered more danger in their few days of travel than they ever had at the bed and breakfast and she feels that she has failed him. He was right. They shouldn't have left and it's too late to go back.

"Mom."

"Yes?"

"I don't want to go back to the city yet."

He's watching the Fairfax ruins burn with her. Somehow the wasteland at their back is comforting compared to the jutting metal in the skyline before them.

"Okay. We won't."

She knew nothing of the land out here, the farthest west she went in pre-war D.C. was a resort tower that she can't remember the name of that stood alone in what used to be a forested area. It was more than likely blown away by now.

They walked the south road aimlessly, still following the western outskirt of the city. After a while when it curved inward they left it and walked over the barren ground itself, still staying in sight of Washington Monument for fear of getting lost when the sun set. Nights in the wastes are cruelly dark and no match would penetrate the shroud of black ash and dust when it fell. Over the crest of the hill they ascended she saw the tops of houses, either torn away or shredded bare but still standing somehow. She recognizes the suburb almost immediately.

"What is this place?"

"Andale."

"Is it safe?"

She can still see her childhood home standing at the end of the street, sides sunbleached yellow.

"I don't know. There might be people here."

"I don't see anyone."

The neighborhood is as desolate and empty as anywhere out here. A little gust of wind blows paper and trash across the road. The fuel station still has cars at the pumps. It's unsettling. They watch it for a while.

"Mom. Should we check it out?"

She's still looking at her old home. Imagining her white bedroom with the blue bed. The old swingset is still in the back yard. One of the seats sways back and forth.

"I don't know."

She doesn't realize that she has been slowly walking down the hill, the boy behind her. They're on the street, already past the gas pumps. She's staring at her house, at the broken windows. She could swear she saw movement at a curtain on the second floor, in her old bedroom, but she keeps walking slowly forward.

The door to her home opens. They freeze instinctively and the boy moves behind her. She feebly reaches for her rifle but hopes that whatever walks out of that door will bring her end with it.

It's a woman. She stares at them through the dust. Squints through the gloaming. Walks out a little further. She has a pronounced limp. Skeletal in her thinness, somehow different from their own. Brown hair. Green dress.

"Oh my God."

She drops the rifle on the ground. The other woman drops her hand from her eyes and stares at them. The boy moves around her to watch.

"You can't be real. You're gone. You're dead."

The other woman shakes her head a little, face dazed. The mother looks at the boy. He can see her too. She isn't imagining this.

"Why are you here?"

It's her voice. Somehow this voice sounds different than the one she's heard in her dreams and nightmares. In the hallucinations that walked the halls of her mind for years. This voice is real.

The other woman shakes her head again, eyes still locked on hers. "Of all the things I expected to come walking down that road, you were the last of them." She smiles, the movement is awkward. The lips fall to a smirk and she's suddenly recognizable. That all-knowing smirk.

It's her.


End file.
